At first glance, William T. Vollmann’s Europe Central demands respectas a serious and sober historical novel. The book is massive; the coverforeboding. The characters are dark and gloomy, and the incidents relatedare even darker and gloomier. Vollmannfocuses his attention on the most tragiccircumstances of the middle decades ofthe 20th century—including the Holocaust,the Soviet show trials, the Babi Yar massacre,and the Battle of Stalingrad. And if you hadany doubts about Vollmann’s gravitas, justpeer over the more than fifty pages offootnotes (for a novel!) filled with referencesto obscure books and archival documents invarious languages.

But don’t be fooled by all this scholarlyapparatus. Vollmann is a connoisseur of thegrotesque and absurd, and even when hepeers into the inner workings of world-historical events, he aspires neither toscrupulous accuracy nor philosophicalreflection. He forces his charactersto serve as puppets in edifying fables. At the novel’s conclusion, in thepreamble to the footnotes, Vollmann even admits that his book isn't"rigorously grounded in historical fact"; instead "the goal here was to writea series of parables about famous, infamous, and anonymous Europeanmoral actors at moments of decision."

Vollmann occasionally uses the word "hero" to describe some of thesecharacters, but even the boldest of them find that opportunities forconstructive action are severely limited in a world dominated by Hitler, Stalinand their toadying underlings. The most emblematic figure in this entire novelis the German SS officer Kurt Gerstein, a devout Christian who is assigned responsibility for supplying poison gas to the Nazi death camps. Gerstein ishorrified by the regime’s program of genocide, and tries to alert internationalauthorities—at great risk to his own life, he gives an account of the mass extermination program to the Swedish diplomat Göran von Otter, and attemptsto meet with representatives of the Swiss government and the Vatican. In hisofficial capacities, he tries to find ways of constraining the supply of cyanide-based Zyklon B to the death camps, but eventually realizes that he has fewways of doing this without having his efforts discovered and halted.

And what is the end result of Gerstein’s 'heroism'? His attempts to notifythe international community have no apparent impact, and at the conclusionof the war, he is arrested as a war criminal. In July 1945, he commits suicidewhile still under custody. Vollmann offers his own verdict on Gerstein in thefootnotes to Europe Central, and in many ways it sums up the underlyingparadox that haunts the entire novel: “I firmly believe that there was nothing ambiguous about Gerstein's good, unavailing though it proved to be. He isone of my heroes." Such are the positive role models in this book: theyachieve little, and even that comes at the cost of painful moral compromises.Even Vollmann frets over the possibility that “someone who continues to fightevil and gets victimized is from a psychological perspective complicit.” Butwho are we to say that we would have made wiser, better choices in these circumstances? This is the world of Europe Central, a burned-out landscapewhere innocence is unattainable and even self-preservation a constantchallenge, but that fact does not minimize the importance of striving for alesser degree of guilt. A theologian might call this a state of original sin; butfor Vollmann this complicity is embedded in the sociopolitical realities ofEurope during the middle years of the 20th century.

Vollmann tells this same parable over and over again. He relates thestory of Russian general Andrey Vlasov who renounces Stalin only to becomea tool of Hitler. Then he balances it out by recounting the tale of Germangeneral Friedrich Paulus, who abandons Hitler only to become an accessoryof Stalin’s regime. They may strut on the stage of world history as proudmilitary leaders with tens of thousands of troops under their control, but inthis novel they have only the tiniest ability to control their own destinies. Alltheir options are flawed and involve some degree of hypocrisy, yet theyfrequently speak of honor, duty and responsibility. Vollmann is at his bestwhen he takes these sad historical figures, so easily dismissed as dupesor turncoats, and shows how they must have viewed their own circumstancesand narrow range of choices.

Of all these historical figures, composer DmitriShostakovich gets the most attention in thissupersized book. He is a genius, a man whosevocation might seem to place him beyond thereverberations of battlefields and political rivalries.Yet Vollman shows that Shostakovich can hardlyescape the same impossible choices that besetGerstein, Paulus and Vlasov. Stalin's hostility toShostakovich's 1934 opera Lady Macbeth notonly prevented the composer from mountingperformances of this and other works, but actuallyput his life at risk. In such an environment, what isthe correct moral decision? If Shostakovich standsup for freedom of creative expression, he will bekilled and enjoy no freedom or creative expression.If he caters to Stalin’s primitive and clumsy notionsof proletariat art, Shostakovich and his family mightsurvive, but his art will be dead.

In this dangerous game, the most illustrious Russian composer of the mid-20th century is forced into a delicate balancing act. He makes enoughconcessions to survive, but not so many that he compromises his genius. In otherwords, this is the perfect story for a Vollmann parable.

Yet our author undercuts the power of this story by portraying Shostakovichas a muddle-headed bumbler. In conversations, the famous composer canhardly finish a sentence without losing his way. His romantic life is a disaster,and he somehow manages to destroy the relationships that would be mostsustaining to his psyche. Meanwhile, family and friends are constantlyreminding Shostakovich to watch what he says—surely his home and phoneare bugged!—and often pressure him into lies or accommodation with theruling regime. He rarely takes their advice, but the reader never gets thesense that his objections are driven by policy or principle. Rather this greatmusical mind is terminally clueless whenever pragmatic moves must bemade in the real world.

I call this the Amadeus syndrome—in honor of the celebrated play andOscar-winning movie that depicted Mozart in similar fashion. The basicconcept is a simple one: no necessary connection exists between a sublimework of art and the artist, who might just be a shallow joker. I don’t find thisposition persuasive, but I grasp its appeal to a certain postmodern mindset.What better way to ensure the "autonomy" of a music composition than todismiss the composer as a dottering fool?

How accurate is Vollmann's depiction of the bumbling, incoherentShostakovich? Judge for yourself by comparing the biographical recordwith the fictional reenactment. In Elizabeth Wilson’s detailed biography Shostakovich: A Life Remembered, we encounter the composer’s modest description of his cello concerto: "I took a simple little theme and tried todevelop it.” But in Vollmann’s version of this same conversation,Shostakovich rambles on: “My dear lady, thank you for your, your, you know,but I, I, well, I simply took a simple little theme and I did my simple, simplebest to develop it!” Those who go back to primary sources will find thatShostakovich, in his private communications, was often incisive, frequentlyironic and very conscious of double meanings in his words. His close friendIsaak Glikman saw Shostakovich as the master of "veiled" remarks,and noted his skill at conveying his meaning in subtle hints and allusions.He might loosen up after a few drinks, but even then he became more biting,not a blustering fool, as he comes across in much of Europe Central.

And how reliable is Vollmann's account of Shostakovich’s love life? Hereagain the historical record deviates markedly from the novelisticenactment. Vollmann places the love affair between the composer andElena Konstantinovskaya at the center of his novel, and shows how itcontinued to define Shostakovich's emotional temperament until hisfinal days. In real life, Shostakovich had a brief affair with the young translator.This tryst threatened the composer’s marriage, but did not topple it. A shortwhile later, Konstantinovskaya was married to film director Roman Karmen,and Shostakovich was again acting the part of a dutiful husband. He mayhave had a lingering attachment for his old flame—some see hiddenreferences to this lover in the Fifth Symphony (1937), but Vollmann'scontention that this was the central relationship of Shostakovich’s life,and that his obsession would last forty years, is just a fanciful invention.

These distortions are indicative of Vollmann’s approach to historical fiction.Readers who assume that Europe Central is an accurate rendering of eventsare advised to read the footnotes carefully. These are filled with admissionsof deviations from sources, departures from accepted chronologies,wholesale invention of scenes and relationships, and "retranslation" (a wordVollmann uses at least a hundred times) of texts. Why is he "retranslating"?Vollmann is rarely specific, but in one instance he claims that he changeda passage from Vladimir Nabokov to avoid paying for reprint rights. I don’tdoubt that our author is careful with his budgeting (at several points in thenotes he includes bookkeeping figure on what he paid translators for theirservices), but I suspect that his cavalier attitude toward sources is morethan just frugality. He probably believes that artistic freedom gives him theright to tinker with empirical data and original sources. In an odd way, thisputs him the same boat as the Stalinists and National Socialists he socaustically attacks in these pages.

As the strange footnotes make clear, Vollmann often veers into the territoryof the absurdists and deconstructionists. One long section of the novel,dealing with a Cold War double agent who moves back and forth betweenWest and East Germany, even lingers on the brink of magical realism. Yeteven when he stays closer to historical realism, Vollmann invariably pushesfor extreme effects, occasionally ridiculous ones.

Vollmann’s language borders on the absurd, even when discussing thegravest subjects. "In the hot darkness above [Stalingrad] the moon shonelike Reichenau’s glass eye"; while in "besieged Leningrad, long cattails ofsmoke [are] hanging as soft and fluffy as an opera diva's boa." Sometimesthe similes are deliberately offensive: When a soccer player scores a goal,the fans are “screaming and screaming like kulaks being executed.” But atevery junction, the comparisons are pushed beyond the realm of poeticexpression into bizarre contortions where meaning is practically obliterated.When Shostakovich is at work on a composition "chords and motifs trolledbetween his ears like tank-silhouettes probing the dark teeth of antitankconcrete." The fourth movement of his Leningrad Symphony glitters “asbrightly as the nickel-plated door handle of the late Marshal Tukhachevsky’sautomobile.”

And what exactly does that mean? Who knows!

These are not isolated examples, but indicative of the general tone ofVollmann’s novel. On almost every page, the reader will encounter anoutrageous analogy, a startling incogruity, or an extravagantly hideous turnof phrase. Yet even as a I shudder over some solecism or mixed metaphor,I am inevitably reminded of the musical works of Vollmann's main character,Shostakovich. This remarkable composer—who, famous as he is, is stillinsufficiently appreciated, by my assessment—achieved his greatest effectsby a willingness to embrace the grotesque. The low and high always rubshoulders in his works (and especially the symphonies). Instrumentalgroupings seem chosen with a cussed desire to bring out the awkwardnessand rudeness of themes. Percussion is employed to horrify as much aspropel. Melodies are twisted into parodies of themselves. Who could everrecommend this as a methodology for artistic creation? Yet Shostakovichdoes it, and succeeds again and again. Vollmann, for his part, operates withan almost identical aesthetic vision.

Yes, Vollmann is the Shostakovich of fiction, and those who have interpretedthis book as a straightforward work of historical fiction are falling into the sametrap as those who tried to assign similar meanings to the Russian composer's pieces. Many will tell you that many of Shostakovich's most famouscompositions embody narrative structures drawn from the history of WorldWar II and the ongoing class struggle, just as Europe Central is considereda novel on that same historical period. In both instances, the bombast and absurdities are clearly intentional, and those who try to sweep them aside are missing the most essential parts of their works.

By the way, I’d like to give William Vollmann credit for rewriting the history ofWorld War II as a kind of musical development. What a brave notion! Yet—strange to say!—he is hardly the first to do this. We see the exact sameapproach realized in Gunter Grass’s The Tin Drum and Thomas Mann'sDoctor Faustus. Yet it is to Vollmann’s credit that his ambitious novel, forall its quirks (or perhaps because of these very same eccentricities) canbe mentioned in the same breath as these two modern masterpieces. No,I don’t have much faith in this book as a historical novel, and especially notas a description of a war or life of a great composer, but it succeeds assomething different, as a narrative more in the style of a myth. I am thinkingin particular of those myths in which protagonists battle against cruel destiny,forced to pursue some grand task, but lacking even the most basic tools forsuccess. They must journey into the underworld and win a struggle againstdeath itself, or push the boulder endlessly up the slope only to watch ittumble down again. Such are the heroes—if heroes they be—whopopulate Europe Central.

And myth is hardly inferior to history. As Claude Levi-Strauss reminds usa "myth always refers to events alleged to have taken place long ago. But whatgives the myth an operational value is that the specific pattern described istimeless; it explains the present and the past as well as the future." That senseof timelessness permeates these pages, even as our cranky author distortsevents and inserts little receipts for services rendered into his tale. The endresult is lopsided and even sometimes distasteful, but never boring and,more often than not, brilliant.

Ten years ago, William T. Vollmann depicted composerDmitri Shostakovich as a confused bumbler in hisnovel Europe Central. The book was awarded thecoveted National Book Award for Fiction, and remainsVollmann's best known work. But how fair is hisassessment of Shostakovich, and does this impactthe value of this ambitious historical novel?